DC 08 Day 4, March 27

Today was a little different. After an 8 minutes with our best friend and a prayer time that started with reading Jesus' prayer for us from John 17:6-9 and 20-29, we headed out from "Star" at about 9:00 and arrived at the DC Downtown Clusters Senior Adult Day Care Center. This was formed through a group of several area downtown churches. It is a program for lower income seniors and Alzhiemer's seniors to come and have interaction and stimulation during the day when their families are away from home at work. First, we helped unload the buses as they arrived and then we sat at tables and visited with the participants. Soon it was time to feed one group that was heading back out to attend a movie. We each got to hear all kinds of stories from these wonderful seniors. Some of them had been college professors and others professional musicians. Many of them had been hard working people. They were originally from all over the US and even one man from India. There were even two that through coming to the program had gotten to know each other well and become sweethearts. The man gave the lady a piece of jewelry today in a velvet jewelry box and she was just beaming! Many of them told us about their church experiences and faith. We were able to give them company and encouraging words. After the movie goers loaded bus, we went back and joined the rest of the group (most of whom had dementia or Alzhiemers) for a drummer's presentation & rhythm session. It was so wonderful to see how music could perk some that had been very lathargic earlier. They got to play tamborines, marrocos, and bongo drums all together. Some of us even joined in. Then it was time to help this group to the dining room and serve them their lunch. We left and headed on to the Pravilion (the old DC Post Office Building) for ours. After lunch, we arrived at our ROJA sites for our last day with these precious children. We help them with their homework and they wrestle, run, play, laugh and wear us out in the best of ways! What a pleasure to be able to tell these children that Jesus loves them and that we will be praying for them! For many of the them, the snack that we helped serve them will be all the food that they get this evening. For most, without the program, their homework would never get done. This program exists with very little funding or supplies. It has room for improvement, but is so much better than the alternative of nothing constructive or safe for these children. Tonight we ate at Ben's Chili Bowl - everyone loved this experience! Ben's is Bill Cosby's favorite restraunt in DC. It's been around since the 40s and 50s. Most of us ate the famous "half smoke" chili dog. It is actually a cross between an Italian Sausage and a braut split down the middle and covered with chili and toppings. We also had chili/cheese fries. Last week there was a new Russel Crow movie filming here at Ben's which is also the site in a scene in the movie the Pelican Brief. On the wall were all kinds of stars' pictures and autographs. We came back to "Star" and had our final debriefing....we wrote poetry to express our experiences and encouraged each other by writing comments on our name papers for each other. We are all thinking about what kind of changes we might make in our lives to be able to serve others on a more regular basis while at home.